


Hammer Time

by Merkwerkee



Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [29]
Category: Masters of the Metaverse
Genre: Explosions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22854478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: A day in the life of Bruno Hamilton, soldier; explosions, sabotage, and the wearying notion that none of the enemy have had anything like enough training for this
Relationships: None
Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643020





	Hammer Time

“Now, Mr. Hammer,”

Bruno grimaced as his nickname-cum-callsign dripped from his captor’s lips like crude oil. He hated hearing it from his enemies - their disdain was always clear, though this guy also managed to fit in condescension and mockery; impressive for getting it all into one word - but he supposed it was just another reason to replace Lexington’s whiskey with piss when he got the chance since he’d known and had assigned it as his callsign anyway. Not like Lexington’d notice, given the quality of the stuff he seemed to prefer.

Still, it was a name he’d been trained to respond to for years. Ever since his last night of leave before graduating boot camp he’d been known as Hammer or Hammer-ton. One of the guys in his unit had thought it funny to bring a mule into the barracks before the rest of them got back and of course they’d spooked the damn thing by slamming the door open. Bruno had reacted on instinct and punched the mule in the head hard enough to drop it, breaking his hand in the process. Seven seconds of stunned silence had ended when Hendrickson had blurted that the last time he’d someone do something like that it was his paw using a hammer to drop sheep for butchering.

One trip to the infirmary later and the name had stuck. He’d been Hammer ever since. He still wasn't sure how Lexington had heard about it, but the spook hadn't so much as twitched when he'd handed over the papers designating Bruno's official callsign. 

Bruno wasn't so sure he _wanted_ to know.

“We know why you are here.” And this guy was still talking. Honestly, if they really knew why he’d been here, they wouldn’t be here. Round one in a dank concrete room had gotten them the locations of the explosives he’d planted around their base, and they’d gotten to most of them in time. The few they hadn’t found had compromised that base to the point where they’d had to fall back to this secondary location and had earned him a few hours with an inexperienced sadist putting needles under his fingernails.

“We know who you work for.” Maybe the public line, but if these guys had any actual idea who he worked for this conversation would be taking place in a much deeper hole. Even a cursory glance showed four immediate exit strategies with minimal harm to life and limb, with three more being viable if he didn’t love his fingers very much.

Maybe put those on the backburner.

“All we need from you is a location. Your team, their location.” Wow, these guys knew jack shit. Fuck, what a waste of his time. The colonel hadn’t been this wrong about possible info caches in a while, plus now Bruno had to break himself out of prison because damn if he was wasting another 72 hours on these losers.

He sighed, and his captor tensed, pleasant expression disappearing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hammer, am I boring you? Perhaps you might like to make the closer acquaintance of your namesake.”

Bruno waited until the slimeball had turned away to a tray of tools that gleamed in what would have been a sinister fashion if he’d had any faith that this nimrod knew how to use them. As it stood, the guy’s little charade of sliding his fingers carefully over the instruments as if he didn’t already know which one he was going for was all the opening Bruno needed to dislocate his thumb and slide out of the standard police cuffs they’d used to secure his arms to the chair. It was the work of a moment to pop the other set and then he was free - they hadn’t chained his ankles, more fool them.

The interrogator must have heard something, because even as Bruno stood the guy was turning back to face him with a look of surprise on his face. Bruno casually snapped his neck and the look of surprise became permanent - or at least it’d last until the guy’s face got rearranged, something Bruno wasn’t about to waste time on. The door opened out with hinges on the outside - probably the most professional part of this clown college operation - but the extremely obvious microphone and closed-circuit aftermarket camera blinking away in the corner told him that he wouldn’t have long to wait before it opened.

Sure enough, not two minutes after Bruno took up position beside the door - holding the hammer from the tray, he wasn’t about to break his knuckles on these guys if he didn’t have to - the pounding of feet echoed from the corridor outside the room. They don’t even check through the grill-covered window before kicking the door in and spraying bullets into the room on full auto.

If the guy on the floor hadn’t been dead already, he sure as hell was now. Bruno counted quietly in his head until the shooting stopped and stepped out into the doorway. Sure enough, they’d fired until the magazines were empty - common mistake, but it’d be their last. He didn’t give them a chance to reload; the first went down with one good swing to the head, while the second guy tried some ninja shit that looked like he’d been spending too much time watching d-list karate movies and not enough time in an actual dojo. Bruno broke the knee on the leg the guy had tried to snap-kick him with, then put the guy himself down with a punch.

It was the work of a moment to take their weapons - knock-off automatics clearly purchased in bulk - and pat them down for their spare magazines. The fact that they only carried a single spare clip each was just one more disappointment on a pile of them. Bruno sighed as he moved further into the base; the fact they’d had a fallback plan had brought his expectations maybe a little too high, but this was just pathetic. He could hear alarms going off and stampeding feet heading away from him; they’d made the logical assumption that now that he was out of his cell he’d immediately try and escape, rejoin his unit.

But that wasn’t Bruno’s mission.

A locked door stood in his way for all of five seconds before he kicked it in; behind it, a dusty storage closet full of boxes. Comparing the writing on the boxes to the picture the colonel had insisted he memorize before embarking on this stupid mission, he began pulling boxes open until -

Well.

Maybe the colonel's pet spook hadn’t been full of shit after all.

And maybe he’d still render silent judgement on the man's remaining marbles for sending him in counter-espionage style when an infiltration route would have worked just well for extraction and wouldn’t have made him endure eight and a half hours of amateur-hour torture. Grabbing the box and the contents of a few others he’d found, Bruno began making his way out of the base; the layout was a little nonstandard but more straightforward for it - clearly these people had never had any kind of education on how to harden a building against intruders.

Goons were beginning to fall back into the base now that it was apparent he hadn’t conformed to their preconceived notions and run straight for the nearest exit once he’d gotten loose, but they were doing that badly too - at least, the first few were. After that they learned from their predecessors’ mistakes and checked corners before coming around them; he’d be a little more impressed if their ammo discipline had improved along with their caution.

Still, it didn’t take him long to get to the exit; in fact, it took him longer to rig explosives around the exit and set a tripwire with a failsafe than it did to actually reach a door to the great outdoors. A cursory glance was enough to show him that these idiots were as shit with their vehicular security as they were at torture; the nearest jeep has a full tank of gas and the keys in the glove box. Well, Bruno wasn’t above teaching them an object lesson so he punctured the gas tanks on all the vehicles he could find, slashed the tires, and stole all the keys. It’d make the LT smirk if nothing else.

As Bruno drove away, he consoled himself with the thought that since he was heading back early he’d have a shot at the bottle of good scotch the colonel kept in his office where he thought no-one could find it; cute, especially given that Bruno swept the offices once a week if he was on-base and Lexington swept every other day. Damn spook.

Just before the base quite dropped out of sight, a rumbling explosion was accompanied by a bloom of yellow-red flames. Bruno pulled a pair of sunglasses from the glove box, set them carefully on the bridge of his nose, and set his sights for the rendezvous.

Damn, he loved FAE bombs.


End file.
